Microsoft and Apple try to save the desktop operating system.

Can two bitter rivals save the desktop operating system?

In the battle between Apple and Microsoft, Bertrand Serlet and Steven Sinofsky are the field generals in charge of competing efforts to insure that the personal computer's basic software stays relevant in an increasingly Web-centric world. The two men are marshaling their software engineers for the next encounter, sometime in 2009, when a new generation of Macintosh and Windows systems is due. Their challenge will be to avoid refighting the last war - and finding themselves outflanked by new competitors.

Many technologists contend that the increasingly ponderous PC-bound operating systems that currently power 750 million computers, like Microsoft's Windows Vista and Apple's soon-to-be-released Mac OS X Leopard, will fade in importance.

In this view, software will be a modular collection of Web-based services - accessible by an array of hand-held consumer devices and computers - and will be designed by companies like Google and Yahoo and quick-moving start-ups.

"The center of gravity and the center of innovation has moved to the Web, where it used to be the PC desktop," said Nova Spivak, chief executive and founder of Radar Networks, which is developing a Web service for storing and organizing information.

Faced with that changing dynamic, Apple and Microsoft were expected to develop operating systems that would increasingly reflect the influence of the Web. If their valuable turf can be preserved, it will largely reflect the work of Serlet and Sinofsky, veteran software engineers with similar challenges but contrasting management styles.

One software developer who has worked at both companies - and asked not to be identified because he still consults for Microsoft - compared the two men's approaches to the difference between martial marching band music and jazz.

Sinofsky's approach at Microsoft, he said, is meticulously planned from the beginning, with a tight focus on meeting previously agreed upon deadlines - a crucial objective after the delay-plagued Vista project - but with little room for flexibility. In contrast, the atmosphere inside Apple's software engineering ranks has been much more improvisational.

Serlet, a French computer scientist who was drawn to Silicon Valley two decades ago, has developed a loyal following among Apple's rank-and-file programmers. He has a quirky personality, according to several members of his team, and takes a certain amount of teasing inside the company.

"Bertrand Serlet likes the process to be a little chaotic," said one Apple programmer, who would not allow himself to be identified because of company restrictions on public statements by employees. "There's a strong dependence on people making the right judgment calls the first time."

Serlet and Sinofsky say they are too busy to give interviews.

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